Mental Health | Pausing | Nomadic

It’s Sometimes Necessary to Pause and Figure Out a New Direction In Life

We didn’t mean to stay for a year

Those who have followed me on Medium since my very first days, and even those recently joining me, likely know our story. In 2017 we sold all of our possessions — a house, 2 cars, and 99.9% of our ‘things’ — plus we closed down our home-based businesses to head out into the world to travel full-time.

It all came about because I watched the Netflix documentary Minimalism and had a lightning bolt moment.

Since then we have traveled and lived in Central America, parts of the Caribbean, Northern Africa, East Africa, Eastern Europe and Turkey. It’s been a wild six years of adventure and I’d like to say that we aren’t finished yet.

However, it has also become abundantly clear that a life of full-time travel for so long left us tired and burnt out.

We didn’t even realize how depleted we were until we returned to Canada. But after being back for almost one year, it’s clear how exhausted we were, and it has me wondering whether or not full-time travel is the answer to my dreams after all.

Making money on the road

For most of my young traveling life, I always hated to go home at the end of a trip. I would get depressed at just the thought of it and always wondered what it would be like to just stay out in the world. Was it even possible?

Back in those days, it probably wouldn’t have been as easy as it is now. With the advent of selling items online and the numerous ways for people to now make money on the internet, it certainly is. But it still isn’t ‘easy’.

Getting a foothold in the online world requires enormous amounts of work while constantly pushing yourself to be seen and stand out from the crowd. While I did have success with selling things online and writing on Medium, I have to say I wasn’t making enough to be sustainable long-term.

Sure, there would be enough money to get us from month to month, especially in countries where the cost of living is low, or the exchange rates are favorable, but to save up money for large ticket items like plane tickets was definitely a challenge.

Now that we are back in Canada and making decent money again, we feel immense relief. Here, we know we can make enough money to head out into the world again with comfort.

Always Starting Over Again

One of the drawbacks to this lifestyle is the constant need to start over. Each time we move places, we meet new people, we have to find places to shop for food and restaurants to eat at, and we have to find places to stay. Plus, we need to find a new routine.

On one hand, it is exactly what I want out of life — new things to discover, new foods to try, new cultures to learn about — but on the other hand, it gets tiring. And I’m not too proud to admit that I often crave routine and a sense of belonging.

Being back in Canada has allowed me to step back and take stock of the things that are important to me. I’m not enamored with Canada and what it has turned into these days, but I also know that it is not the worst place in the world to be. Plus, I feel a sense of belonging here.

It is a place where we can stay a while, get our bearings, and reassess our future. That simply can’t happen in many places that we travel to, as there is a constant knowing that our visa is running out and we will need to move on at some point.

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. ~Mae West

Experiencing a summer of anxiety and finding relief from it

I had immense difficulty with anxiety in 2023. I’m still not sure if it spilled over from the anxiety that I had already been carrying around as we traveled, or if it came from reverse culture shock. Either way, it was one of the hardest years that I have ever had, and I don’t say that lightly.

During the summer, we were back in my hometown, which I’m sure contributed to my anxiety, but we realized that we also had a few life-changing experiences during our last stint of travel. I wrote about many of them in my article It’s Time to Admit That We Have Been Through A Lot. I often wonder if we have some sort of PTSD from the experiences and we have spent much time discussing these possibilities.

We have finally signed up for online therapy through Better Help, so I hope that we can rectify some of these internal issues that we have been struggling with. It’s obvious to me now that we have needed this time to pause, rest and recharge before deciding our future.

I also have had a bit of a health problem with my stomach and digestion since arriving back in Canada. At times, I’ve wondered if it has to do with the anxiety and stress that I was carrying around. It seems to have eased off these days, but I am also days away from an exploratory procedure to make sure that all is well. So I feel relief about that.

Yoga, meditation, and deep breathing have helped me greatly to curb my anxiety — I try to do them daily.

These days we are feeding cows

For about 6 weeks now we have been staying at one of Chris’ childhood friend's farm and are working for them. We have our own house to stay in on the property and they have given us a vehicle to drive — not like we have anywhere to go.

The nearest community to us has 250 people and beyond that, we drive for 30 minutes to a bigger town with about 6000 people. We didn’t realize how healing it could be to plunk ourselves down in the middle of nowhere, but we have been relishing it. Not being distracted by outside influences means that we have more time to focus on ourselves.

We are also enjoying the daily routines that we have here. We know the tasks that we need to complete each day, then we are usually free to work on what we want after that. Of course, some days have more jobs to do than others, but we can roll with it. Mid-March brings calving season so we are looking forward to a change of pace and getting to witness the adorable calves being born.

We gave it a good go

In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take. ~Lewis Carroll

I have no regrets. I had wanted to travel full-time, and I did it. I don’t have to go on wondering what it would have been like, and I can now move forward picking and choosing the parts I did like, and tweaking my travel experience moving forward. I’m certainly not finished traveling yet — I think it is just going to look a bit different than it did before.

Of course, Covid happened, which changed many things on our path. One can’t imagine where we may have ended up or where we would be now if we had been able to stick to our initial ‘plan’. I use that word loosely as we tend to not plan too much, but Covid certainly derailed any that we might have had.

It’s hard to know if we would be in the same position now if that hadn’t happened. But I think it’s fair to say that either way, we gave it a good go.

What will travel look like moving forward?

A few different times last year we contemplated leaving Canada to just go somewhere, anywhere. However, we didn’t have the resources, nor the energy to make that happen. We realized that we were happy just staying put for the moment, and travel could wait until we were well healed and feeling ready for it.

I feel like we have somehow come full circle. After a year's break back in Canada, we are again planning to head out, but this time we will be more prepared. We know how we want to travel, we know the things we need to do to maintain our energy while doing so, and we know that we likely won’t do it for multiple years again.

In 2017 we left without much in the bank and not a clue of what to expect. We faced it head-on and rolled with the punches while taking every opportunity that we could to travel and broaden our experiences. Most of our time out in the world was a struggle as we built online pursuits and lived on very little, but I still am happy for the experiences. We learned so much about ourselves and our resilience that we never would have had we stayed in our conventional lives.

This time we are heading out with a more solid foundation having established online pursuits to carry us along. Plus, of course, we will be saving up more money because of our current employment. All of this will contribute to a more sustainable and stable lifestyle.

Life is about experiences

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear, for newer and richer experience. ~Eleanor Roosevelt

I have always understood that the richness of life comes through the experiences that we have, and more than ever before, I feel the need to enrich my life with them. Even now, as we work on this farm, I am entranced with the experience. It’s all so new and different and I love learning as much as I can about life on this planet — no matter where I am doing it.

I know I will get out into the world again to experience more, but I also know that I need to do it more sustainably and take better care of my mental health along the way.

Pausing in Canada has helped me to see all of this more clearly.

This is a response to Michele Maize and her February prompt ‘pausing’. Thank you to the Black Bear editorial team for managing and publishing my submission.

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